The wide wide world of RSS

I’ve been using RSS feeds for a while. I use them to track personal and work related news, which means of course I read RSS feeds while at work and when I’m at home. At this point and for some time now, it is an important part of my job. RSS is a tool that helps keep me informed, exposes me to new technologies, and even helps me solve technical problems from time to time.

So, needless to say, RSS feeds are important to me. If they are important, then you could reason that I have put some time into finding the right tool (RSS reader) for browsing this information. This part however is not as easy as it sounds.

There are a number of options from online services like Google Reader and Bloglines to client side applications like RSS Bandit and Attensa. I mention these particularly because they are a few that I have tried personally for an extended period of time and they certainly each have their strengths and weaknesses. RSS Bandit was probably the first product I used heavily, it was a good product and helped me navigate the mountain of feeds I read, but it was really just a local client, there was not an easy way to share with myself or others.

This leads to an interesting point, when I am reading an RSS feed my first priority is sharing with myself. I need to be able to revisit something in a specific context from any number of locations / devices. My second priority then is sharing things with my friends and colleagues, which could be just as challenging, but seems like it is typically a little easier.

So, I want to be able to share (flag for follow-up, tag with delicious, post to tumblr, blog, email) anything I might find interesting or relevant.

At the moment Attensa is the product that does this best for me. It can be used to add a “river of news” to Outlook or you can use their stand alone reader. I use the river of news in Outlook 2007, the feeds can be organized a number of different ways. It took a little effort to get things looking just the way I wanted, but as a whole the product makes reading RSS feeds a much better experience. The ability to tag with delicious and blog (with Windows Live writer even) are built right in, all I have to do is click a little icon next to the post title. Attensa really has put a lot of thought into the product and seems to be genuinely trying to give people and businesses the best tool to harness the power of RSS

Let me know what you think and what you use.